VIDEO REVIEW : A Decade of Art--Yes, Art--on MTV : Long Beach Exhibit Is Subversive, Delightful

There are so many images loose in the world. Hundreds of new ones materialize every second and the old ones never go away. They keep being recycled, mutating, spinning off in new directions, spawning and spreading. They buzz around the mind’s eye like a dense swarm of pesky mosquitoes, each leaving a sting, each demanding a response. Love me, love yourself, be smart, dance, relax, buy something, buy something, buy something. The airwaves are so crowded with them they could form a new ozone layer if we could figure out how to knit them together.

This ever-accelerating deluge of images was kicked into high gear 10 years ago today when MTV commandeered the airwaves. While many in America’s intellectual community dismiss MTV as optical junk food for teens, those on the cutting edge of cultural politics have always taken it seriously, and rightly so.

The Long Beach Museum of Art has been hip to the significance of TV for decades--it’s had one of the most innovative video programs in the country since the early ‘70s--so it’s not surprising to find it presenting what may stand as the definitive overview of MTV. Beginning tonight at 8:30 and continuing throughout the month, the museum will present “The Art of Music Video: Ten Years After.”

Curated by Michael Nash and Kim Harlan, the series attempts to establish the roots of the form, chart how music video has evolved, define recurring motifs, reveal how video has borrowed from the fine arts and suggest where it may be headed next. Nash and Harlan have done a remarkable job with this ambitious undertaking, and the series they’ve put together (which travels to institutions throughout America until the end of 1992) is entertaining, smart and deliciously subversive.

The series commences with “The MTV Decade,” which spotlights early pioneers and breakthrough works by artists including David Bowie, Devo, Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson and Peter Gabriel. Some of these tapes were made several years before the advent of MTV and many of them never aired on the station, while others stand as classics of MTV’s early years. Also screening tonight is a selection of MTV station ID’s and public service announcements. The ID’s are fantastic visual one-liners--each delivers an original punch line in just 10 seconds--and it seems unfair that they’re presented uncredited, as this is some of the sharpest work in the program.

Hosting tonight’s show is San Francisco artist Homer Flynn, who bills himself as art director and co-manager of the Residents (Flynn is reportedly a member of this mysterious, anonymous group). Neo-Dadaists with a penchant for the surreal, strange and slightly sick, the Residents were making amazing videos long before anyone else even thought of it (included tonight is a tape dating back to 1972), and this little-known group is consistently miles ahead of the pack with its jarringly original videos.

“Hello Skinny” (made with director Graeme Wifler), which screens tonight, is an exercise in eerie horror evocative of work by David Lynch and photographer Weegee, while a tape by the Residents alter-ego Renaldo & the Loaf (included in Program 4, “Notes From the Underground”) is the most savagely funny piece in the entire series. Titled “Songs for Swinging Larvae,” it’s a woozy bad dream worthy of the World Weekly News.

Two tapes made by Devo with director Chuck Statler (one dating from 1975) are in a similar vein, and seeing their wickedly clever work today, one is amazed to recall that this band was filling arenas in the early ‘80s--compared with what’s going on in music today, this group was wildly radical.

Other highlights include Zbigniew Rybczynski’s tape for John Lennon’s “Imagine,” John Kline’s “This Is How It Feels” for Inspiral Carpets and Jean-Baptiste Mondino’s tape for Les Rita Mitsouko. Credited with masterminding Grace Jones’ look, Mondino has a wonderfully fresh eye and the Mitsouko tape is a dazzling style job.

There’s really not a bad video in the bunch, but by the time you’ve sat through an hour and a half of even the best videos, the limits of the form begin to surface. As in visual art, videos are confined to four basic approaches: narrative, abstract, conceptual or a combination of those styles. In watching the tapes, it’s surprising how quickly the mind’s eye reaches the point of saturation and how finely tuned and sophisticated the eye becomes. By the end of the program, one can see just a few seconds of a tape and know exactly where it’s going and what the possibilities of surprise are. One also notices that while busty babes are the prime selling tool on MTV, they rarely turn up in critically acclaimed tapes--there’s not a bimbo in this entire show.

Finally, one observes that as video evolves the tapes grow more aggressive because the edits get quicker, and one realizes that MTV has irrevocably changed the way we process visual information. It’s made the images come faster, it’s made them more focused, it’s taught us how to decode visual shorthand, it’s transformed the act of seeing into a nonstop adrenaline rush. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of opinion.

Subsequent shows are: next Thursday, “Music Video and the Politics of Dancing”; Aug. 15, “20th Century Musical Visions”; Aug. 22, “Notes From the Underground”; Aug. 25, “Visitations”; Aug. 29, “Artists Advertisement Alternatives.”